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Jim Dine: Prints
Exhibition Dates: July 20 – September 29, 2018
“Here’s the deal. Since I have been making prints, and looking at them for sixty years, I know what I’m looking at, but I often wonder what I would think if I weren’t a printmaker. A print is not always easy to grasp at first glance. It takes some visual education to see the intricacies, and also to understand the layers and different techniques. This knowledge doesn’t take away the joy of the first meeting. Even when you look at the simplest lithograph by Matisse, you wonder how its beauty was made. Matisse often drew on transfer paper and then the drawing was directly transferred to the stone, but in other more elaborate prints, it is rewarding to know the complexities and various combinations of techniques. It can brighten your eyes (so to speak.)”
– Jim Dine (excerpt from Jim Dine: A Printmaker’s Document. Steidl, 2013)
Jim Dine was born in Ohio in 1935 and grew up working at a family-owned hardware store. After receiving an BFA from Ohio University in 1957, Dine moved to New York in 1959 and immediately became part of the avant-garde art scene. At the time, many other “Pop” artists responded to the broader culture with deadpan popular imagery; meanwhile, Dine created a unique style, electing to combine elements from popular culture with personal content. Using this as a guiding principle, he then selected images to represent both his inner self and his artistic persona. Eventually these images, including hearts, skulls, clothing, and tools, reached iconic status in his art, for they became blatantly self-referential. For over fifty years, Dine’s artwork has represented the cutting-edge of contemporary artistic thought. As Dine’s creativity and popularity endures, so does much of his personal imagery. His images vary as much as the media with which he renders them does; in general, however, they evoke a fascination with the body. His works are featured in the collections of significant institutions around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Pompidou Centre, Paris. He lives and works in New York, Walla Walla, WA and Paris, France.
This exhibition was made possible through support from the Anonymous Fund.
Click here for a PDF of the artworks included in this exhibition
